


quoth the raven

by Dresupi



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, Thor (Movies)
Genre: Crack, F/M, Flirting, Ravens, Talking Animals
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-01
Updated: 2018-04-01
Packaged: 2019-04-16 22:07:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,070
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14174379
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dresupi/pseuds/Dresupi
Summary: Darcy's little animal friend brings her a gift that definitely belongs to someone else.Of course, upon closer inspection, that gift isn't such a bad one after all.





	quoth the raven

**Author's Note:**

> I know I said I wasn't going to be able to write anything for this challenge, but this wouldn't leave me alone. Enjoy!

Darcy could have sworn she had just taken a seat on the lounge chair on her balcony when there was a flutter of wings, followed by the soft scrape of metal on concrete beside her feet.  

Glancing down, she spotted the source of the sound: Lenore the Raven, bringing another one of her shiny gifts.  Seriously, you help a raven who was iced to the balcony railing  _ one time _ and then you get shiny presents forever afterwards.  

Lenore’s gifts usually consisted of candy bar wrappers, bits of greasy foil from the trash cans, and the occasional broken necklace.  

Today, however, it looked like Lenore had taken up petty thievery to bring her favorite human a prezzie.  

“Um, Lenore… do you take concrit on your gifts?  Because I think these already belong to someone…” 

Darcy scooped up the items in question: a ring of keys attached to  _ very _ familiar looking keychain.

“Hi,” said Lenore, tilting her little head and peering up at Darcy.  “Hi.” 

“Yes, hello…” Darcy reached into her pocket and pulled out a peanut. Lenore’s favorite were the unsalted, unshelled variety, and so Darcy kept a bag of them in her pantry for her fine, feathered friend. “But seriously? He’s going to be missing this the next time he leaves his apartment and can’t get into his car.”  

Lenore said nothing, because she was happily shelling her peanut and eating the contents.  

Darcy turned the keys over in her hands, her thumb rubbing over the miniature, silver replica of Captain America’s shield. Bucky Barnes was definitely the biggest dork in the building. And that was saying a LOT, because Steve also lived here.  As did Jane, and Bruce, and Tony…

All those dorks and James Buchanan Barnes was the king, who had his best buddy’s weapon of choice in miniaturized sterling silver on his key ring.

She sighed and twirled the keys around her finger. “You owe me for this, Lenore.” She reached into her pocket and pulled out another peanut. “I outta make you go down there and explain… except I don’t think Bucky would understand you the way I do.”  

“Hi,” said Lenore, reaching for the peanut.  

“Yeah,  _ hi _ …” Darcy said, leaving it on the patio table for her.  

With the keys in hand, Darcy padded back into her apartment and into a pair of flip flops. She locked the door behind her and made her way to the elevator. 

Bucky lived in the apartment directly below hers. In fact, if she was feeling particularly rowdy and brave, she could hang out over her balcony and see part of his. This usually only happened when she was a couple of glasses into a bottle of wine and he was sitting outside playing his old fuddy-duddy music.  

But he hadn’t been playing his fuddy-duddy tunes for a while now, he and Steve had been out on some kind of mission.  

He was apparently home now. And sans keys, thanks to Lenore.  

Darcy hoped she would catch him before he went out. The last thing she wanted to do was wait around for him to get back if she missed him. She supposed she could always drop the keys off with Steve or Tony, but then she’d have to explain to  _ them _ how she ended up with them.  

And she didn’t want to explain how she had a raven minion just yet. It was a fun little secret and Darcy didn’t have many of those. So sue her for not wanting to share. Also, for a minion, Lenore was kind of independent and unpredictable in her missions, so Darcy wasn’t really impatient to claim her as a minion just yet. 

She placed her hand over the fingerprint scanner, and waited for Friday to inform Bucky of her arrival.  

She was jingling his keys when he opened his door.  

He frowned, his blue eyes quizzically scanning what was in front of him. “Lewis? Are those my keys?”

She grinned widely, probably a bit too widely, but she always seemed to forget how handsome he was until she was staring at him in his perfectly formed glory right in front of her. From his blue eyes to his perfect jaw, to his narrow waist, Bucky Barnes was a pleasure to look at. “I believe they are… and you won’t believe how  _ I  _ ended up with them. There’s this bird I feed on my balcony--”  

“Is it the crow?” he asked suddenly, reaching out to take them. “I  _ swear _ … I didn’t have any treats for her today and she just grabbed my keys and flew off… tried to explain to her that I haven’t been home, but I don’t think she cared...”  

Darcy frowned. “Wait. You have a  _ crow _ you feed on the balcony?”

“Yeah, I call her Callie… Callie the Crow…” Bucky looked a little sheepish for a second, but it passed. “I dunno if she’s a girl or not, but I kind of got the idea that she was… She likes peanuts and she says ‘hi’.”  

Darcy pressed her lips together. “Lenore, you little mercenary…”

“Lenore?” Bucky asked. “Who’s--”

“Hi!” came a very familiar caw from Bucky’s balcony.  

Darcy smirked. “Lenore,” she said, nodding towards the bird.  

“Callie,” he said, nodding in understanding. “You been feeding her too?”  

“Yep. She brings  _ me _ presents, though…” Darcy watched as Callie/Lenore settled in on Bucky’s patio table with the peanut she had given her upstairs.

Bucky glanced back at Darcy, smiling slightly. “Yeah? Me too...”

“What does she bring you? She usually brings me like… shiny stuff.  Garbage, mostly, but she finds it pretty, I guess…” 

He blushed and shook his head. “Nah, nothing like that… she uh… she brought me something today, though… and I happen to think  _ she’s _ pretty...”  

“What did she--” Darcy stopped when it became all too apparent what Bucky was referring to.  “Oh…” 

“Yeah… oh.”  

She laughed nervously. “Didn’t know you were in the market for a… for a  _ me _ .”  

Bucky shrugged. “Wasn’t ever in the market, but you kinda grew on me… I used to play my old records just to see if I could get you to hang over the balcony and talk to me...”  

“There are better ways to talk to a girl, Buck.”  

“Like… cook her dinner? ‘Cause… that’s what I was gonna go with…”  

“Dinner’s good… or pretty much… anything that doesn’t include hanging upside down over a balcony…”  

“Noted,” he replied. 


End file.
